Pirates of the Timestream (9 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Morgan wanted, at least for the present, to restrict access to the ship that was his pride and joy. So HMS
Oxford
rode at anchor out in Port Royal harbor.

Grenfell had been fascinated by the seventy-two-foot frigate. The system of classifying warships into six “rates” would not assume its definitive form, based on the number of guns they carried, until 1746. Currently, the English navy used the much less satisfactory basis of number of crew, introduced during Cromwell’s Commonwealth in 1653. But
Oxford
was what would later be called a “fifth rate”—a frigate too light to stand in the line of battle but ideal for commerce raiding or hunting down the other side’s commerce raiders. In the epic fleet actions of the European wars, she would have been a marginal player. Here, “beyond the line,” she was a game-changer. Never before had the famously parsimonious English crown committed so formidable a warship to the defense of its colony of Jamaica.

Morgan had mentioned she was twelve years old, and according to Grenfell this meant she had come in after the revolution in design philosophy that would establish the basic look of warships until the advent of steam propulsion in the nineteenth century. That revolution had begun in Tudor times, when the English had abandoned the old high forecastles that had looked impressive and provided a “high ground” for boarding actions but had ruined the sailing qualities of the ships, causing their bows to be blown down to leeward. The high poops had also gone, resulting in the “race-built” ship intended primarily as a gun platform.
Oxford
was typical in still having a quarterdeck and forecastle, but an open rail was used for these higher parts, allowing a sweep of sheer line, albeit not quite as straight a sheer line as it would become in the next century. These ships had also acquired finer configurations, being almost three times as long as their beam. And most recently they had gone to three masts rather than four, eliminating the bonaventure mizzen, while adding a topsail on the bowsprit and “top gallant” sails above the topsails. All of which had made them faster—twelve knots maximum, although five or six usually—and easier to handle.

Grenfell had enthusiastically explained all this to them. It wasn’t Henri Boyer’s field. But now, walking along the dockside and looking out at
Oxford
, he first began to feel something of the enduring appeal of sailing ships, the romance that the passage of centuries had been powerless to entirely dispel.

The ships tied up to the dock as he walked past were more typical pirate craft: former merchantmen, most of them small. Some, indeed, were little more than large open boats with a single mast and some shelter for provisions and men. None but the largest had any more armament than a few light cannon, often mounted fore and aft as “chasers,” and swivel guns to repel boarders. From Grenfell’s description, Boyer decided he could recognize some of the modifications the pirates typically made to their captured vessels, like stepping the mainmast aft for increased speed in the wind. It made him feel quite the old salt.

Up ahead he saw the vessel he was looking for. Across her stern was painted the name
Rolling-Calf.
He assumed a casual air as he walked past under the eyes of its crew, who looked over the railing with expressions ranging from indifference to suspicion. They were mostly black, but included a few with the Native American features and coloring of Jamaica’s native Taino people, a branch of the Arawaks who had been in the process of being pushed out of the Antilles by the cannibalistic Caribs from South America at the time Columbus had arrived. In short, it was a typical assemblage of Jamaican Maroons of this period. The process of amalgamation between the escaped slaves and the Tainos hadn’t been going on long enough to have produced any mixed offspring who would have reached adulthood. Boyer nodded to them without receiving any response, and sauntered on. He had almost passed by when that which he had hoped for happened.

Zenobia emerged from below decks and looked around, enabling him to catch her eye. He gave her what he hoped was an appropriately jaunty wave.

“Ahoy!” he called out. “I already know your name. I’m Henri.” Slaves didn’t have last names, for they could not contract legal marriages.

“So it’s you.” Her voice did not overflow with friendliness, but she didn’t turn disdainfully away. In fact she leaned on the rail and looked him over. His mind automatically processed her speech into Standard International English. In fact, it was an odd-sounding form of this century’s English, not quite like what had been neutrally imprinted on his brain. It held a very vague suggestion of a French accent, although with a lilt in which he thought to detect the distant ancestry of the Jamaican patois of later centuries. “I’d hoped to have seen the last of that crew you’re with.”

Not, specifically, “The last of
you
,”
Boyer noted optimistically. He decided that a little truculence of his own might be the best approach. “What are you complaining about? I’m the one who ought to be angry. You sent me sprawling, wench! My mates still haven’t let me live that down.”

“Nor should they,” she said with a smile of catlike complacency.

“And besides, what were you being so disagreeable for? We were just trying to save you from those swabs who were chasing you.”

“I didn’t ask for your help!” she flared. “I take care of myself—and of my men.”

“Well, anyway, we’re going to be seeing some of each other starting a few days from now when the fleet rendezvous at Île-à-Vache.” He was careful to call Cow Island by its French name. She seemed to notice.

“I knew you weren’t from Jamaica—something about the way you look and sound. You must be from Saint Domingue. Runaway?”

“Yes.” Boyer put bitterness into his voice. “I’d seen enough of our men being whipped—and enough of our women being raped.”

“Then you’ve seen nothing! Do you know what they do to a disobedient slave on Barbados—and have started doing here on Jamaica? They chain him down, flat on his belly, and burn him to death little by little, starting at the soles of his feet. Sometimes they can make it last so long that a good part of him is ashes by the time he finally dies. Or sometimes they’ll starve him to death with a loaf of bread hanging just outside his reach. That
really
takes a long time.” Her voice remained level, but her eyes burned. She gestured at her crewmen. “Is it any wonder that they run away when they think they see a chance? Or that the penalties for piracy hold no particular terrors for them?”

“Yes, I’ve spent enough time here in Jamaica to know about these things. And I certainly know about that last part.”

“I suppose you do,” she admitted, softening a trifle. “You turned bucaneer yourself after running away.”

“But what about you? You’re no runaway. And,” Boyer ventured, “from some of the stories I’ve heard about you, I can understand your ship’s name. After all, the
Rolling-Calf
has no fixed abode but wanders where he will, moving like lightning . . . and is put on Earth to cause trouble.” He could see her surprise at his knowledge of the Jamaican legend. It encouraged him to push a little harder. “It makes me wonder if there might be some truth to those stories. Where do you come from?”

“Where I come from is none of your damned business!” she flared. She seemed to feel she had somehow lost ground by letting her hostility slip momentarily. “Now get out of here! We’ve got preparations to make. One of our crew has died of dysentery, and before we leave for Cow Island there are certain things we must do, and do ashore.”

“Of course there are,” said Boyer, glimpsing an opening. “His duppy must be appeased lest it do harm to the living. But must you drive me away? After all, is it not a rule that all bad feelings must be suspended so that all can sing together with the dead?”

It was a shot in the dark. Boyer’s knowledge of the Jamaican ceremony known as “The Nine Night” was based on accounts going back no further than the early twentieth century, when anthropologists and folklorists had first begun to record such things. But he knew the ceremony was one of great antiquity, with roots reaching back to Africa, and he dared hope that his knowledge might not be entirely irrelevant even in 1668. From the look on Zenobia’s face, he knew he had guessed right.

“You
have
spent some time in Jamaica,” she said slowly. “Yes. This man was a hot-headed man, and his duppy could do a lot of mischief. Of course, since we’re about to leave for Cow Island we’re not going to have time to do all that is needful. But we’ll do as much of a
Koo-min-ah
as we can in the time we have tonight. The preparations are made.”

“May I be of help?”

“You’re not one of us,” she said suspiciously.

“No. But we’re going to be part of the same fleet, and the duppy could work ill on all of us.”

“Maybe.” She cocked her head and gave him a challenging smile. “Are you sure you want to? This isn’t going to be exactly like what you may have seen before. You see . . . those stories you say you’ve heard about me . . .”

“I don’t believe everything I hear.”

“Maybe sometimes you should.” She held his eyes with hers for a moment. “All right. Be here just after dark . . . if you dare.”

* * *

“Er . . . a ‘duppy’?” Jason Thanou wore a blank look.

“Sometimes equated with a ‘ghost,’ but that’s not really correct,” Boyer explained. They sat in Jason’s room in the inn, which was barely large enough for the two of them, in the stifling late afternoon heat.

“What’s the difference?” Jason asked.

“The belief goes more or less like this, although there are many local variations: the duppy is that which gives a body the power to function as a living body. It is the most powerful part of a person, and it can work much evil. When a person is alive, the heart and the brain control him and he won’t abandon himself to this evil—or,” Boyer added with a grimace, “at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But some people have more powerful duppies than others. And when a person dies, the duppy no longer has anything to restrain it. It can do much harm if it is let loose among the living. So there are rituals—the
Koo-min-ah
—to force the duppy to stay in the grave.”

“Hmm. And you’ve been invited to join in. At least you know what to expect.”

“Not necessarily. I do know something of the ‘Nine Night’ ceremonies that were later common in Jamaica. But my information dates from centuries in this period’s future. And Zenobia admitted that our impending departure for Cow Island is forcing her to settle for an abbreviated version. And besides . . . she dropped some hints about those ‘stories’ concerning her, as though warning me to expect something out of the ordinary.”

“So maybe you’ll get to see the basis of those stories.”

“Maybe. But I couldn’t get anything out of her about her origin. She’s very reticent about that.”

“Understandable.” Jason reflected a moment. “Has she given any indication that she knows you’re a time traveler?”

“None. I’m not sure exactly what she thinks of me, or why she consented to let me participate in whatever is planned for tonight. I get the impression that she thinks of me as a kind of . . . potential convert.”

“Why fight it?” Jason grinned. “She likes you.”

* * *

“You’re almost late,” snapped Zenobia irritably as Boyer came aboard.

The tropical night had fallen with its usual suddenness, and the shapes of the crew were only dimly visible around him. There didn’t seem to be many of them. And . . . “I don’t see the body.”

“Of course not. It’s already been taken ashore so the rest of us can meet it halfway.”

Boyer mentally kicked himself for not recalling this aspect of the ritual. “But where are we going to meet it?”

“We have a place west of the harbor-mouth, where nobody ever goes. Now come on! We’ve got almost a two-mile row.”

They clambered over the side into a small boat which rocked alarmingly under the weight of a chest that had already been lowered into it. Boyer manned an oar, and with Zenobia sitting in the stern and steering they pushed off and rowed west by northwest. The dim lights and raucous sounds of Port Royal’s nocturnal revelry dwindled astern. Ahead was only blackness, although overhead were the myriad stars of Earth’s pre-electric-lighting night sky.

Boyer wondered how Zenobia was going to locate a particular point on the shore in the dark. But after a long while, she began making purposeful course corrections. He glanced over his shoulder toward their destination and saw the tiny light of a torch dead ahead.

They pulled up onto a narrow beach—not far, Boyer calculated, from the future site of the town of Portmore—where the torch was embedded in the sand, revealing the scuttling crabs emerging from the water. Another boat like theirs was already there, unattended. They tied up beside it and, with one man bearing the torch ahead of them and two others carrying the chest, they silently set out along a very rudimentary trail into the jungle. They soon came to a clearing and simply stopped. No one spoke.

Boyer was aching in various places, and his hands were blistered from the unaccustomed labor of rowing. But he hardly noticed, for it was as though he had entered a dreamlike realm of unreality. He was a child of twenty-fourth-century Earth, where ancient ethnic and cultural identities were rapidly dissolving despite all self-conscious efforts to preserve them. Doubtless as a result of those efforts, he had been drawn to the study of his own Haitian origins. But realistically speaking, he had never felt any particular identification with them. He had, in fact, consciously resisted any such identification, which would almost have seemed a betrayal of the ideal of academic objectivity to which he had always subscribed. And still less had he felt any identification with the folkways of the Jamaicans, with whom he had nothing in common save remote African roots. But here, in this jungle clearing in the firefly-flashing darkness with the Blue Mountains to the northeast rearing up darkly against the blazing star-fields and these people around him awaiting the body in soundless stillness—or what somehow seemed that way despite the din of birdcalls and monkey-jabbering—he felt something within him he had never known was there.